Neither Lie One to Another

Truth or untruth is not always a matter of language, but often one of implication, inflection, innuendo. A clever person intent on being untruthful can give a false impression, even with the right words. This could perhaps be called inner untruth, the untruth of intention. A perceptive woman once said that she had less respect for those who pride themselves on sticking to the truth since she had come to realize how many people use “truthful” words in such a way as to convey a lie.

Concerning eloquence and oratory Carlyle has commented along this line⎯and it applies in principle to any utterance, public or private: “What has been done by rushing after fine speech!…I want you to study Demosthenes, and to know all his excellences. At the same time, I must say that…he advised next to nothing that proved practicable; much of the reverse. Why tell me that a man is a fine speaker, if it is not the truth that he is speaking?…For, it a ‘good speaker’…is not speaking the truth…but the untruth…is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?…Really it is not the speech, but the thing spoken that I am anxious about! I really care very little how the man said it provided I understand him and it be true.”

“Beware of Affectation in speech,” wrote William Penn. “It often wrongs Matter, and ever shows a blind side.”

“Truth,” said another source, “is the secret of eloquence and of virtue, the basis of moral authority; it is the highest summit of art and life.”

“It is sophistry,” wrote Walter Lippmann, “to pretend that in a free country a man has some sort of inalienable or constitutional right to deceive his fellow men…. It may be inexpedient to arraign every public liar, as we try to arraign other swindlers…. But, in principle, there can be no immunity for lying in any of its…forms.”

Technical “truth” coupled with untruth of intention often seeks to deceive without seeming to deceive. But deceit is punishable in the court of conscience, where all things are accounted for, no matter how clever a man may be in his way with words.

We may fittingly recall the commandment from Leviticus: “Neither lie one to another.”